Ardentryst - 1.71-testing

Ardentryst's new home: http://jordantrudgett.com/ardentryst

Hi, Jordan.

What a superb accomplishment.

I'd like to do you a small service, if I may, by reporting typo "is" versus "it" found in ardentryst.py v1.71 on line 2664:
worldbox_msg = "Look out! Rumour has is there is a giant forest guardian lurking in this area. Stay strong!"

Level 14 Nyx, I got a ways to go. Cheers! :)

Gumm

hi again, thanks for your time. I tested more configurations: Normally i use the flags "HWSURFACE|DOUBLEBUF|FULLSCREEN" for my screen. If i use a png image it's unplayable, if i turn hwsurface and doublebuf off, i'm losing about 10 fps, but without them, it isn't so smooth. (normal: 60 fps with a res of 1280x900)
The png image i used has a res of 400x400 pixel. I shrinked it, but the performance was the same. I think it doesn't fit to my resolution. I shrinked my screen to 300x300 pixel -> 60 fps with the png image with hwsurface, doublebuf and fullscreen. I think i have to choose a lower resolution. Thanks for help.

Hi Y Körber, try this bit of code out:

import pygame, time
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((640, 480))
picture = pygame.image.load("myImg.png").convert_alpha()
screen.blit(picture, (50, 50))
pygame.display.flip()
time.sleep(3)

Once you do convert_alpha(), it should convert it to the format you want (RGBA for the right bit depth, etc.) Does that speed things up? If not, try to work out what's slowing you down. Also, big PNGs will have a much bigger effect on fps, is your picture > 1024x768 or anything like that?

Hi, are you only using pngs? How does it work? If i use one png image, i'm losing about 20 fps. I'm interested, because i need semi transluence in my pictures too, but png doesn't work for me :/.
Great game so far.

Damn!! this game remember me with final fantasy,,and the BGM so beutifull!!
i hope this game become larger and add more feature like weapon enchant,new item,and new map..

Great game. The music reminds of Jazz Jack Rabbit :-)

Love it. beat the game with both Nyx and the P dude(idk how to spell his name).

one question though. I started to modify the source to make it harder for me, but the modifications won't run. how can i make it work?

Thanks for this great game! Very fun to play!

Feel like reading a bit of background information on Ardentryst? Or maybe you are good at writing about games. Anyway, until it's moved elsewhere, go and read/edit (and I do strongly encourage you to add and edit it!)

Thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tgfcoder/Ardentryst

Yes, 1.7 is on the (web)site*! And thanks!

1.7 is on the side ;) Great Game!

Haha, I know :'C I was hoping no-one would notice so much. But I'm really sorry about the inconsistencies in some graphics. It's due to laziness, so I have no good excuse...

Great work! Graphics are a little rough in places, but that's no biggy--They're certainly better than mine ;)

Thanks! And yes, framerate is definitely an issue on (dare I say) lower-end computers. It really requires more grunt than the average sidescroller! Thanks for playing! I hope you register on my site and join the Ardentryst community!

A-W-E-S-O-M-E-!-!-!-!-!-!-!

Great job, dude! One of the finest examples of what could be made with Python, imagination and hard work. Congratulations!

BTW, the framerate on G4 Macs could be a little slow even with all GFX off. Still playable, though...

Thanks for all the kind words! If you register and log into my website, you not only can put your score on the worldwide scoreboard, but you can discuss suggestions and bugfixes on the forum there :) The next release will be in about half a week.

http://jordan.trudgett.com/

Is there a way to turn the framerate complainer off? Every once in a while I have a framerate spike, and it comes up and interrupts the game even when the framerate has gone back to normal.

Really great job, I can't write a good response because I am so tired right now. I'm so tired right now because I was just going to give this game a try and stayed up 2 hours later than I should have :)

By far one of the best Pygame games I have *ever* seen - only complaints are how short the game is, and not enough characters/weapons/enemies/etc.
Also the jump physics are a little wonky to get used to...

Otherwise - awesome game! I loved every part, and it never crashed nor did I find any noticeable bug at all - very well done!

This game reeks with production values, this is insane! It's just beautiful, and the music is top notch. Way to go! I'll play it some more when I have time.

Again, great job!

Please email me with comments, if you find any bugs or anything like that. Thanks!

Actually, I think it might be a combination of that and the fact that it writes to disk too (logfile heh.) You can turn particles off in the Options.

Jordan.

Great game so far! It would be nice if level up and new life animations could be turned off or be able to use something less fancy instead since it can slow down the game quite much.

Recently got Softpedia Editor's pick at Softpedia:
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/GAMES-ENTERTAINMENT/RPG/Ardentryst-41284.shtml

As in comment out the lines that produce errors:P It probably means you wont be able to take screenshots but hey who does O.O

Btw it says 'adrentryst.py' ;)

Er, just take out those bits. I'm not sure if in that release I had the proper code there yet. It doesn't only work on Windows, and I'm a strong supporter of Linux and Mac games. Hence I will always have source releases alongside Win binaries. Thanks

Sad, another pygame running on Windows only. Wanted to play on my Mac, looks like a gem.
saveimage = screen => NameError: global name 'screen' is not defined
main() => File adrentryst.py, line 3828, in ? main()
...

Remember to check http://jordan.trudgett.com/ for the latest (pre-release) updates to Ardentryst (with screenshots!)

Haha, yep. Good luck!

Haha sounds great. :P

And in that case you're roughly œ a year older than me. I'm new to pygame, and I have a feeling this game will drive me onward and be a source of inspiration! Of course, I will have to start out with Much much smaller projects than anything similar to Ardentryst. Besides, I will never be able to produce audio/art anywhere close to that of Ardentryst, but that's what a GNU GPL-license is for, isn't it? :)

Thanks, and I'm 17 now. :O =) I had a very Ardentryst-related birthday. :P

:O This is some truly great stuff! Especially for a 16-year-old developer.

To all who cannot open .tar.gz files, the source is now contained in a .zip file. There shouldn't be any troubles on either platform with zip files. :)

Thanks for the support. I will be continuing Ardentryst soon (but not so intensely :P)

Ahhh ok. Awesome. Nyx is hard though :(

Yeah. But did you play as Nyx?

Awesome. But still only one world :(

Ah, ok. Me sad now ;-(

Haha, cool. If you were using the sourceforge statistics of # of downloads, they only update at the end of each day (so you were part of the 38 people who downloaded it that day.)

Yay! I was the first one to download it xD

Awesome work. I almost beat the Wasp Valley place but at the end I jumped off a cliff ;) I'll play some more later, cause I have some stuff to do right now. ;) Nice work :)

@tayger: It will be a source release, and a Windows Binary installer, so you can play it on any operating system supporting Python/pygame.

Thanks for the comment :)

Looks promising! Wil it be windows only or also run on Mac and/or Linux?

Umm... I think I'll just wait for the Tuesday release ;)

There is. If you want to play a second level-in-the-making, um, make sure you've
finished Shroom Valley, save your game, edit ardentryst.py, find the variable mapdata, and find the entry for "Shroom Valley", change the map value from "Level_1" to "Castle" and you can play a evel in a castle.. Then load your game, and go back to ''Shroom Valley'' and play it. There will be more levels for the Tuesday release. Thanks for the quick comment!!

Wow. Amazing work. The opening voice work was really cool too. I'll put out a full comment once it's done, but first, is there still only one level?

Hey SDC,
I have just downloaded the source package from SourceForge:
ardentryst_0.24.1.tar.gz

tar: This does not look like a tar archive
tar: Skipping to next header
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

This is what happens when I open it with Archive Manager.
It may be confused about its filetype?

Anyway, from a terminal command line, issue these commands:

$ gunzip ardentryst_0.24.1.tar.gz
$ tar xvf ardentryst_0.24.1.tar

making sure you're in the same directory as the .tar.gz file.
(the dollar sign just meaning its a terminal prompt)

which will make the ardentryst/ directory for you.

There will be a new release of Ardentryst soon.. around a week. Thanks for your interest! And sorry for the late reply!

My linux says that the archive format is not supported. (The name states for .tar.gz, but it doesn't seem like such a file.)... What could be wrong here?

Haha, I know. Fun, isn't it?
Micrathene was probably my favourite, an elf owl (Micrathene whitneyi)

Also, to answer your question, I am :P

haha, who is coming up with these names? Chordata is a phylum of animals with notochords.

Thanks Mike! I'm still working on the basics first =p And maybe I'll make a second level just for testers (I get a lot of "Can I play the second level?" .. "Yes, but...") lol =)

Thanks Caleb! :D

Wow. This is plain amazing. You should make another level though, just for more playability :) Keep up the awesome work!

wow, i looking forward to learning how to do that!
thats pretty cool!

Okay, just rename it to .tar.gz.
For some reason WinRAR doesn't like it-- and I dunno why this 'Net explorer downloads it as .tar rather than .gz even though it STATES it's a .gz file.

Silly if you ask me, but for now, rename it to (ardentryst).tar.gz.

I'll check it out when I get back home.. Rar can uncompress .tar.gz, right?
Hmm.. I'll have to download the archive myself and verify its integrity.

Wow! This is coming along really good Jordan! It feels like a professional game! Nice work!

Well... download link works, but .rar file is like "damaged"... that's what says me the uncompress tool

Arrrg! Dude this game looks awesome but download links doesn't work :( Where i can download it?

I apologise if one of the tags are wrong (Demos in particular, I'm not sure if this classifies as a 'demonstration'!) but change them if need be.

Also.. there's a new background done for the game, and magic has been implemented at a very basic level:
http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8873/screeniedz6.png

Thanks =)

This is looking really good Jordan!

Update: New status bar, and vertical scrolling (to make up for the pixels covered by the now opaque status bar)

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/6444/screenshot00002sf2.jpg

(Work in progress)

Update: Options screen complete. Controls and game options can be customised. There isn't any link from inside the game to outside yet, which is being worked on. The whole in-game menu with inventory and tabs and such is probably the next big interface to design.

A video of gameplay etc. can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_yzhydsnE4

(Version 0.21.0)

@Daniel: I forgot to add that network play will be favourable over TOOK/hotseat play. Both are planned for the final game. =)

@Daniel- all the players sprites are temporary, and yes, Idleworm is where the walking base is from. (Great tutorials there too!)
The jumping animation, is actually just the walking animation slowed down.
I'll be sure to make the knees bend in my jumping animation! The screen shaking -will- be optional/customisable (as well as just about everything else.) I'm working on the options screen right now:

http://img409.imageshack.us/img409/1125/optionsgo1.jpg

I understand the way that keyboards are wired, and hopefully the way it's designed, there won't be a need for four or more keys simultaneously held (or in such a way that the keyboard creates key ghosting.) I do note that WSAD will probably not work in conjuction with the arrow keys in some places, so a little adjustment might have to be there. Also, multiplayer, won't be implemented for a long time, at least until single player has most of it's features.

Thanks, the background art is probably the most finalised thing so far (but that's not to say I'm not going to edit it.)

Sempridge.ogg is getting the scrap. Re-writing it. But I wanted to put the Micrathene Developers Demo out first.
Theme1 is also getting reworked, but I thought it was nice-- you don't hear it for too long.
Keep in mind that I'm the only (sixteen year old) composer for the game at the moment.
There is no world map music. World_Map.ogg is a placehlder, and yes, it was originally an opening theme (good pickup there.)

What did you mean by weird mode mixing, and specifically what songs had sour notes? Oh, World_Map.ogg -- that's getting the scrap too. By mode mixing did you mean chordal improvisation? O_o

The game was released not for heavy playability or aesthetics, but for source code/engine and as a project milestone (this is being marked for HSC.)
Okay, I probably should have stated that somewhere... But at least you knew that most of the graphics were temporary (Intro scene in particular.)

Thanks for all the evaluation of many of the aspects of the game so far that are often overlooked, and I would be really grateful for any future evaluation(s). It seems you have a high standard, perhaps even higher than mine. :)


@Mike: Controls now default to forward slash, comma, and period (and the two rows of keys above them) instead of 1-9 on the Numeric Keypad. Also, the ordering is reversed, 1 is /, 2 is ., leaving the index finger closest to the most used button. Numeric Keypad still works though (just bound both sets of keys to the actions.)
Also, I've made an automated release-building-script which should eliminate any files I don't want in the release, and problems like that shouldn't happen any more. (PD_minigame has been removed from the project altogether anyway.)

@David: Thanks. :) It's been a couple of months in development, and 7.4k lines of pure Python so far.

I've seen that walk animation before.
http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml
Remember to bend the knees when you jump.

Keep in mind with two-on-one keyboard playability that some keyboards can only understand a few keys being pressed at once.

I don't like the screen shaking when damage is taken.

Nice background art.

Music is ok. Mixing issues; the bird noises are too loud and too frequent in sempridge.ogg. In theme1.ogg, the chord progression (i VI VII i or iv) is pretty cliche. The melody is nice but too repetitive. World_Map.ogg doesn't sound like a world map, it sounds like the opening theme in final fantasy or one of the caves. There are also some sour notes and weird mode mixing being done. The tambourine noise is too loud and the delay is overdone.

It's an ambitious endeavor, so good luck.

OOH ok! Thanks! ALOT more fun now :D. I started skipping the tutorial and must of missed that part. lol! Great job! I like your animations. They'll look amazing when they're finished!

Yeah, pd_minigame shouldn't be there in the releases XD

The reason why the action buttons are on the numeric keypad is to pre-empt two-on-one-keyboard playability (with w,s,a,d or e,d,s,f and a 3x3 block of keys somewhere in the middle of the keyboard analogous to 1-9 on the Numpad.)

Numeric keypad! Read the tutorial O_O! XD

Wow. Really nice. I had to comment out the "import pd_minigame" line, but it worked really nice after that! This is amazing!

One thing though. When I walked up to a badguy and pressed 1, he didn't attack. Are attacks not programmed in yet or something?

It look awesome! =)

Yes!!! We want source release!!!

Keen we are. I'm dying to play this!

I haven't made a public release yet. It'll probably be in February, when my internet speed is back to 1.5mbps. If anyone is really keen on playing from source code as it is at the moment, I'll host it (I only reccommend you play if you are a programmer.)

Can you give me a direct download link? Can't find a link on your site.

Do note that the "Screenshot" is actually 4 screenshots put together as a collage. Thankyou =)